By VERNON CLEMENT JONES, Guardian Business Editor, vernon@nasguard.com

The PLP chairman is suggesting amendments to the Hotel Encouragement Act, billed as a way of extending tax breaks to Bahamian businesses, is timed to help container port owners redevelop their land after relocation of wharf activites to Arawak Cay.

Glenys Hanna-Martin raised the concerns shortly after Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham stood in the House to introduce the proposal.

The amendments are set to extend the same tax breaks now enjoyed by foreign hotel developers to Bahamians looking to set up or renovate existing restaurants and other tourism-focused businesses.

"It is our aim to deepen the penetration of tourism and its expenditure in our economy and to assist even more Bahamians in obtaining slices of the Bahamian tourism pie in addition to the work slice," said the PM.

But, Hanna-Martin argues that those most likely to benefit, and possibly at the expense of government revenues, are container port owners looking to recast their water front property into tourism-friendly operations.

Earlier this year, Ingraham suggested those successful commercial businesses would soon be required to fold their operations as the government moved to transfer the island's commercial import activity to a new terminal on Arawak Cay. That facility has yet to be built.

The change will free up some of the most valuable land in New Providence — owned by some of its richest denizens. A slew of tourism projects, running the gamut from hotels to restaurants to upscale stores, will likely spring up in place of the present mountain of shipping containers. Under the government's amendments those new Bahamian-owned businesses would all be eligible for customs duty exemptions.

That could ultimately deprive government coffers of millions in revenue, argues Hanna-Martin and others, suggesting it may do little, in and of itself, to enfranchise middle- and low-income Bahamians looking to set up shop, catering to tourists.

Yesterday the Minster of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing, himself, seemed to suggest the average Bahamian would need more assistance — likely in the form of improved financing opportunities — to win a piece of that "tourism pie" referred to by the Prime Minister.